During a surgical procedure, it is usually mandatory to maintain the sides of an incision apart from one another so that interior organs are maintained accessible during a surgery by providing retractor grips for gripping and spreading the sides of a surgical incision. Accordingly, various surgical retractors have been utilized to maintain a surgical incision opening. However, heretofore, no such retractor has provided the ability to easily create and maintain an oblique surgical incision opening wherein the sides of the incision are not only separated substantially along contour of the patient's body, but also in two opposite directions, these two directions being substantially normal to the contour of the patient's body. For example, it is not uncommon for the grips of a retractor to have a single fixed orientation and a single lateral degree of movement for moving the sides of an incision apart generally in directions following the contour of the patient's body surrounding the incision. Such retractors become especially troublesome in recently developed surgical techniques wherein the surgical incision is relatively small and may be somewhat displaced from the most direct access to a desired surgical site. In such surgical techniques (sometimes known as "keyhole surgery" or "mini-surgery"), the most desirable configuration for the surgical opening may not be simply a lateral spacing apart of the sides of the surgical incision. Instead, an oblique opening may be desired, wherein one side of the surgical incision is raised above the other so that, for example, a short tunnel or cavity may be created to the internal area of the patient to which the surgery is directed. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a surgical retractor that alleviates the above-identified difficulties of prior surgical retractors.